Biography

Professor Eglash’s research examines the ways in which information technology, mathematical modeling, and other science and technology practices are intertwined with cultural categories such as race, gender, and class, and explores interventions in these relationships. His current project, funded by the NSF, HUD, and Dept. of Education, translates the mathematical concepts embedded in cultural designs of African, Native American, Latino, and heterogeneous urban youth communities into software design tools for secondary school education.

Eglash’s educational background includes a B.S. in Cybernetics, an M.S. in Systems Engineering, and a PhD in History of Consciousness. A Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship enabled his field research on African ethnomathematics, which was published by Rutgers University Press in 1999 as African Fractals: modern computing and indigenous design. He publishes in journals ranging from American Anthropologist to Complexity; some of his recent essay titles include “The Race for Cyberspace: information technology in the black diaspora” (Science as Culture), “Race, Sex and Nerds: from black geeks to Asian American hipsters” (Social Text), “Computation, Complexity and Coding in Native American Knowledge Systems” (NCTM’s Faces of Mathematics series), and “Cybernetics and American youth subculture” (Cultural Studies). He is co-editing an anthology titled Appropriating Technology: Vernacular science and Social power, to be published by University of Minnesota Press in Spring 2003. His educational software is available for free online at http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.htm.